Stage Door: "Trip to Bountiful"

Dancin’ Dan here. The Tony Nominations come out tomorrow and Nathaniel will be discussing them along with a couple new plays he's seen. He has yet to see this one, though.

I have been a lifelong lover of live theater. As much as I love movies, nothing beats the experience of seeing a play or musical live on stage. Even at its worst, there is still an intangible quality to watching a story unfold right in front of you at the same time you are watching. At its best, though, that turns into something transcendent – there is something about watching a person really live a moment while you watch that is indescribable. In the new Broadway revival of Horton Foote’s The Trip to Bountiful with Cicely Tyson and Vanessa Williams (and Cuba Gooding, Jr.), there were two moments when the power of live theater asserted itself so strongly that I wept.

The first moment is by far the broadest in Tyson’s wonderful, Tony-worthy performance. Having almost reached her childhood home of Bountiful, TX, Tyson’s Carrie Watts finds herself in a bus station with a young friend she made on the bus (a lovely Condola Rashad). First, she breaks out into the hymn “Blessed Assurance”, clapping and swaying like a revival preacher. Then, only a couple of minutes later, she drags Rashad through the dance she remembers doing at the first social dance she went to, which just so happened to be in the very town in which they find themselves. It isn’t merely the sight of the eighty-something Tyson singing and dancing up a storm that moved me, but the transfer of energy between audience and performer that can only take place during a live performance. As Tyson went on, the audience was right alongside her, clapping along and willing her into a bigger, more energetic display. Tyson was all too happy to oblige, alight with a glow from within, sending the audience’s energy right back out to them, earning every bit of the ovation she received. It was truly a sight to behold. [more...]

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The Oldest Living "Best Actress" Nominees

Let's hear it for ladies of a certain age!

Mary Tyler Moore, television icon and an Oscar nominee for a terrifically icy variation on one of Oscar's favorite archetypes 'the monster mom' in Ordinary People (1980) turns 75 years old today. The last picture I can find of her out and about is the one to your left taken at the premiere of "Follies" starring Bernadette Peters (DO NOT MISS IT IF YOU'RE IN NYC!) which is just about the most appropriate show an aging diva can be seen at since it's all about aging showgirls looking back on their lives. (It's also one of the best musicals ever written but let's not get distracted...)

Mary Tyler Moore got me to thinking about the endurance of our beloved Best Actress nominees. There have been various media Oscar mash notes over the years that have claimed that winning an Oscar helps you live longer and while I can't possibly aim to verify that it does give one pause to realize that Mary Tyler Moore and Vanessa Redgrave just barely made this list. Jane Fonda &  Liv Ullman didn't even qualify.

25 OLDEST LIVING "BEST ACTRESS" NOMINEES

01 Luise Methusaleh Rainer (nearly 102 years old)
This two time Oscar winner, the first back-to-back competitive Oscar winner (The Great Ziegfeld and The Good Earth) is the oldest living Oscar winner or nominee from any category. She turns 102 on January 12th.
Still working? Nope... though she still holds court on occasion. She left the movies behind pretty quickly after her prime.

02 Olivia de Havilland (95 years old)
03 Joan Fontaine (94 years old)
Still working? Nope. The famously estranged Oscar-winning sisters were born to British parents in Japan and became Hollywood stars in short succession in the late 30s. Though Joan beat her older sister to the first family Oscar, Olivia triumphed by winning twice. They're both retired and rarely seen in the media. Fontaine supposedly still lives in California. De Havilland, who has lived in France for decades, did show up at the latest Cesar Awards (the French Oscars) where she received a well deserved standing ovation.

Eleanor Parker was a member of one of the most famous Best Actress shortlists of all time in 1950. The year of Bette vs. Gloria when Judy Holliday snuck in and won.

04 Eleanor Parker (89 years old)
The star of Caged (1950) won the Venice Volpi Cup but Oscar always eluded her despite three nominations. If Oscar would ever think to give actresses honorary Oscars, rather than vaguely film-related female celebrities and men from any film profession, she would certainly be worth considering. She's most famous nowadways for her Baroness role in The Sound of Music for which she was not nominated.
Still working? No. Extremely low profile since that last gasp of TV guest work in the 80s.

05 Doris Day (87 years old)
Speaking of Honorary Oscars... her fans get noisy about that all the time. One of the few people you can say "living legend" about without anyone disputing the title. 
Still working? No. Some people believe that Oscar isn't interested in an honorary because she's not likely to show up.

06 Julie Harris (newly 86 years old)
She was an awards magnet in the 1950s, winning Emmys and Tonys and being Oscar nominated for The Member of the Wedding (1952). She played James Dean's girl in the classic East of Eden. It's on the stage where her legend truly resides though. She's won five competitive Tony Awards, which means she's tied with Angela Lansbury for the most wins ever.
Still working? Every once in a while -- her last film was The Lightkeepers (2010).

06 Fernanda Montenegro (82 years old)
The Brazilian legend won a well deserved Oscar nomination for Central Station (1998) which was also up for Best Foreign Film.
Still working? Yep. Next up is a role for Manoel de Oliviera, Portugal's 103 year old prolific director!

07 Joanne Woodward (81 years old)
Mrs. Paul Newman, one of the most acclaimed actors of her generation, won her gold man for The Three Faces of Eve but have you ever seen her work in her husband's debut directorial film Rachel, Rachel? Wow!
Still working? Very very infrequently. Her last major film year was 1993 when she played Tom Hanks's mother in Philadelphia and provided the narration for Martin Scorsese's The Age of Innocence.

More powerhouse legends after the jump... Gena, Baby Doll, The Unsinkable Molly Brown, and a couple of Dames that are still acting and hugely beloved for multiple generations. 

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We Need To Talk About Linking

MTV Tom Hiddleson singing the praise of his new Thor 2 director Patty Jenkins. He just loves Monster (2003) and Kenneth Branagh assigned it to him as prep before Thor 1; how weirdly coincidental.
Go Fug Yourself has kind words for Amanda Seyfried and hilarious words for Justin Timberlake.
Awards Daily Sasha thinks this has been a weak year for cinema -- I'm guessing because of the lack of consensus on a single masterpiece. I'd say the opposite. I can't get over how good this year is. It's so exciting to be looking at an awards season that might not have a frontrunner. Consensus makes it boring. Bring on the passionate discussion of what is "Best" please!

Acidemic in praise of crazy "chicks of death" dangerous women from Flash Gordon (1936) through Rosemary's Baby (1968) to Trouble Every Day (2001)
Reelizer How beautiful is this poster for The Iron Giant by Kevin Tong? Me want.

"The Iron Giant" © illustrator Kevin Tong

Movie Morlocks Kimberly from Cinebeats on Werner Herzog's excellent adapation of Nosferatu starring Klaus Kinski. Such a good movie. 
MNPP JA loves Carey Mulligan and thinks you do, too. Exciting projects she's lining up. 
/Film taking storyboarding to the next level with Darren Aronofsky's Noah's Arc movie.  

Ultra Culture bitches about Rotten Tomatoes in order to praise Terri (which was recently nominated for one of Gotham's prizes)  
Towleroad Zachary Quinto to play a gay ghost on American Horror Story. 

Empire offers up a final We Need To Talk About Kevin poster with "Joker" coloring. I love movie posters but when a movie makes this many and keeps changing it up I start to worry that they don't know what they're selling anymore. 

Finally...

The Lost Boy thinks that Viola Davis is going to win the Best Actress Oscar. That seems to be going around. Here she is at the Women in Hollywood Awards.

The imagination is so potent. And that's really why we're actors because it's the power of transformation, the power of not being you, of going into a world that is different but ultimately real. And I always felt I had that I had that power even as a little black girl with the afro and using the crisco for moisturizer for my skin. I always felt that everything was possible. That I always had the power to be anything i wanted to be.

As I was walking the red carpet someone asked "What sets you apart from everyboy in the room?"

"Well... I'm black."

[Laughter] and then she launches into an honest and beautiful speech about Cicely Tyson "throwing her a rope" as a young dreaming girl and the need for stories about women of color in the movies. She is awesome.